I vividly remember grim warnings from my senior high school gym teachers, who lectured us on what exactly would happen whenever we didn’t wear them.

Best case scenario, we’d never have the ability to have children. We’d twist an unacceptable way, and that’s it, our reproductive organs will be mangled beyond repair.

And therefore was once we were lucky. Worse case, we’d suffer testicular trauma. There’d be ruptures, fractures, contusions, torsions; there is no end on the horrible stuff that could occur to our nuts in a friendly game of pickleball.

Related: The Greater Man Project, 2,476 tips to make you stay happy and healthy for a lifetime

Nevertheless I haven’t placed on a jockstrap since sentences like “I’m concered about tomorrow’s algebra test” and “I sincerely think that dry-humping my girlfriend throughout a slow dance at prom sounds like a meaningful relationship milestone” were issues i considered regularly.

That is, until a public relations rep for Diamond MMA compression jock and cup system-accessible for just $90-sent us a complimentary set a couple of weeks ago.

Should your first thought was, “Hey, isn’t that the same cup Dairy Queen ways to use their Banana Splits?”, we are totally on the same page.

At the beginning, I left it on my small desk, like a kind of perverse tip jar. I even briefly tried it as being a makeshift container for pens and Post-It notes.

I Then decided to strap it on for your Men’s Health Monday morning editorial meeting.

There’s something weirdly exhilarating about planning to work wearing the type of testicular protection usually reserved for MMA athletes.

Because as soon as your balls are that ensconced, you realize, without having a shadow of the doubt, how the day won’t end along with you being rushed on the emergency room with internal scrotal bleeding.

Of course, you could state that about most days-especially if your job, like mine, involves long stretches of typing on the computer, or having conversations with calm, entirely nonviolent those who are unlikely to judo chop you from the nuts without warning.

But there I used to be, all but daring my fellow editors-with merely a smug smile-to thrust their elbows into my gonads, or grind the business end of the shoes into my giggleberries.

Unsurprisingly, there was no takers.

Afterward, I got to speaking with some my male coworkers about balls-hey, these topics just surface-and what, if something, we’re doing to protect them. I discovered that not a single one of those wears jockstraps anymore.

Not just round the office. Even at the gym. Or wherever they work out. They’re essentially free-balling it.

Jay Ferrari, a consistent MH contributor having a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, says the last time he wore a jockstrap “was for pee wee football. But a jockstrap during college football or jiu jitsu? Never.”

Why then not? Why were jocks underwear necessary in our youth, however, not so much in 2015?

When our high school gym coaches warned us from the testicular Armageddon that may originate from letting our boys dangle unprotected, were they full of shit?

“Probably,” says Brian Steixner, M.D., Director in the Institute of Men’s Health at Jersey Urology Group in Atlantic City.

Dr. Steixner has treated some truly horrifying, gory male organ injuries. But with regards to testicular trauma, at least among non-pro athletes, he insists it rarely happens.

In the approximately 2,500 patients he treats annually, only about a couple of those are suffering from scrotal injury.

How exactly does it happen? “Maybe a horse kicked them in the balls,” he says. “Or there is an automobile accident in which the controls went into their nuts. It sometimes has to do with farm equipment or heavy machinery. Your job involves pulling a strap as well as something breaks and snaps.”

In other words, nothing that’s more likely to afflict you. (Apart from the auto accident. But even then, developing a controls rammed to your balls appears like an extended shot.)

“Modern boxer briefs just about solves the problem,” he says. “You don’t need to wear this weird contraption that has these straps that wrap around your butt. You can use tight-fitting underwear, because it does everything a jockstrap did, which is keep things high and tight. That’s all you need.”

While underwear has evolved, very little has evolved in jockstrap and cup technology, which first came into vogue in the late 1800s.

“A jockstrap is actually a jockstrap, today since it was in those days,” says Kevin Flaherty, whose great-great-great-grandfather founded one of the primary jockstrap manufacturers in the nation, the J.B. Flaherty Company, Inc., in 1898.

Before 100-plus years, materials have changed. Flaherty’s company-now Martin Inc., which produces Flarico, Bub, and Activeman products-has evolved from knitted waistbands and straps into more at ease woven products.

The waistbands will have a plush back, and there isn’t a 3-inch-wide bit of rough elastic. But in addition to that, and a few fashion colors, there hasn’t been lots of dexjpky93 in the design.

Except, of course, for products like the Diamond MMA. Their compression-jock-and-cup system is constructed from polycarbonate, a durable thermoplastic material that’s utilized in bulletproof glass.

That may be useful should your job requires people seeking to kill you, or at least severely damage your yam bag. However, for us non-MMA athletes, will we absolutely need that much ball-protecting technology?

Sure, fluke accidents happen. But that doesn’t mean you must walk around wearing a helmet and elbow pads. That could be insane.

“The only other time I’ve seen serious scrotal injury was from your parent,” Dr. Steixner says.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“Like a dad getting kicked hard within the nuts by one among his kids. That happens all the time.”

“It does?” I ask this although I absolutely know he’s right.

I’m a parent of your 4-year-old boy, and I’ve been on the receiving end of the barbarous foot or elbow. I’m knowledgeable of what it’s prefer to obtain a crushing ball blast from a kid not old enough yet to appreciate that scrotums have the same general resistance to blunt force trauma as hard-boiled eggs.

Later that night, as i return home, I’m still wearing my Diamond MMA compression jock and cup. But unlike the professional interactions with my co-workers, I don’t discourage a violent reciprocity with my testicles.

“C’mon!” I shout at my son, who can’t believe what his daddy is asking him. “Hit me again! Really throw your whole body into it this period!”

“Everything about this makes me uncomfortable,” she announces, such as this proclamation will somehow make my son stop hurtling into my nutsack with extreme prejudice.

My son and that i just laugh, and the man is constantly deliver blow after merciless blow onto what must be my soft extremities.

“It’s okay,” I make an effort to explain to her, after pretending for that umpteenth time that my son had caused me irreparable scrotal damage. “This is just what boys do.”

Then he tries on his very own cup-the Diamond MMA individuals were kind enough to transmit me two-and so i give his groin a pounding (although admittedly I pull my punches.)

My spouse eventually walks away. She can’t take it anymore. But my son and i also keep laughing, and maintain punching the other person in the nuts, amazed at the loud CLUNK our knuckles make when they get in touch with what ought to be testicles.

“This is the best evening of my entire life,” my son laughs, falling to the floor, clutching his ribs with laughter.

Testicular violence is definitely not to laugh at. But testicular violence where nobody gets hurt because of modern technology designed especially for professional athletes? Well, that’s just a reminder that we’re residing in a remarkable age, unlike anything our high school gym teachers could possibly have imagined.